The Undertaker's Daughter
by Mirage Nightray
Summary: There's a rule that all time travelers abide by. No, it's not official, of course- nothing's concrete when it comes to time- but when you break the rule, bad things happen. We've all seen it happen, and we've all agreed that it's the one thing you don't do. Empires have fallen, people die for the sake of it. But you see, fate has a thing for conspiring against time travelers.


The Undertaker's Daughter

* * *

A gift for Annie.

A Dave/Aradia fic.

Andrew Hussie owns Homestuck. I claim no dominion over any of the characters.

* * *

"Oh? What's her name? Come on, Dave. You can tell me."

John Egbert's eyes shine abnormally blue against the grayscale of the cafeteria, his smile large and predatory. Outside, the trees whip and scratch at the large windows, thrashing erratically in the howling wind. Rain has drowned out most, if not all, conversation.

In reply, I pick up his milk carton, stealing a sip. He protests, but I ignore him in favor of turning over the conversation to Rose, who teases John for his lack of tact. The low and sluggish atmosphere of the cafeteria is only amplified by the low murmur of conversation. It is as if we're all mourning someone's death, and to be honest, it's fucking ridiculous.

I have had enough about death for these past few months.

No one notices my silence, and if they do, they neglect to mention it. For that, I'm strangely grateful.

I am nineteen and broken already.

After lunch is over and we all obediently pour out of the narrow doorways to go to class, Jade sidles up to me. It has been four months and six days since we broke up. I cannot help but count each day that goes by that she has grown farther away from me. She stops me in the middle of the hall. Her face is dulled by the black of the shades that I see her through. I want to pull away. Jade's electric green eyes shine in the storm, and her pretty pale pink lips hesitate before she speaks. "If there's anything you ever need," she says, her tone pleading. "I'm here to help."

Her touch is cool on my forearm before she takes it away, disappearing back into the crowd. She quickly vanishes. I stand there for a few seconds. I betrayed her. I broke her heart, and she still wants to help me.

I don't deserve Jade.

When the day is over and the walk to the subway and then back home is mechanical, my mind blank, I find the hat she gave me in the back of my room. It's black, tattered and worn, streaked with dirt and mud. I curl into bed, cradling it to my chest. If you hold it to your nose, you can smell the faint scent of formaldehyde and spring blossoms. It is a smell out of time. I don't expect you to know what that is, and I don't think I can explain it to you either.

Five months and six days since I met her.

Five months and six days since Aradia Megido died.

On February 17, 2012, the first time I discover her is in a picture.

* * *

John and Rose are happily consummating their newly found relationship by spending some time swimming in the lake together. The sun is out blazing in full force, melting away the remnants of the winter, and Jade lies contentedly on my shoulder, her eyes closed in blissful sleep. I can see her every eyelash, her smile as I turn my head to press my lips against her cheek.

It was a glorious day. The sky was ringed with white clouds, the ground crowned with soft, dewy grass, and I tasted honey on my tongue when I breathed in.

Eventually Rose and John tired and came back to shore, not so much drying themselves off as screeching undignified insults at one another and flicking water everywhere.

I bean a marshmallow off of each their foreheads with uncanny precision to stop them from waking Jade, but it's too late. She's up and rubbing her eyes. The spot where she lay on my shoulder is rapidly cooling from the lack of her body warmth, much to my dismay.

"How about we get that campsite started?" John suggests, and I agree, helping Jade to her feet before she falls asleep again.

Time passes.

The sky has darkened to crushed velvet and sighs of cold air. I have been kept in charge of keeping the fire just below roaring-bonfire levels, though I relish the warmth and the sight of all of the marshmallows being sacrificed to the flickering orange by Rose burning to melted sugar. I feed Jade one off of the skewer. She giggles and catches the marshmallow- and the tips of my fingers- in her mouth. There's a warm flicker of her tongue. John makes a snide comment about PDA.

Fast forward.

I am walking along the path alone. The girls have gone off to go explore the caverns; John is busy trying his hand at fishing. My Converse, wholly unsuited to the terrain, has become dusty and dirty from all of the underbrush.

It was early in the morning. I remember that I hadn't eaten breakfast yet. Foolish or not, I walk on.

Until the ground inexplicably gives way from underneath me and sends me tumbling down. When I land, my body aches and bleeds in innumerable areas, though I make sure not to give any indicator of pain save for a constant stream of cursing when I attempt to get up.

I look up through the miraculously undamaged lens of my sunglasses, wincing when I put weight on my left leg. The pain is excruciating. I probably sprained my ankle at the very best. Early morning light streams through the dappled leaves and the hole I fell through. Irritated, I attempt to look for a way up. Nothing. My leg is busted and I can barely walk.

Stupid.

The only thing to do is to sit and yell for help, but that is unthinkable as well, so I hobble farther into the hole. It is dark, of course, and I cautiously venture deeper. The tunnel is strangely shaped, the walls jagged but hewn into a rough circular shape. Even stranger is the fact that I find shiny objects on the ground, especially a mini horse figurine and a pair of red and blue monocles. Curious, I pick the monocles up, aching when my back bends. Hadn't these gone out of fashion over a hundred years ago? Why would one be here?

It's cold. My body shivers and produces goose bumps, irritating the thin slide of blood down the side of my face and somewhere in the vicinity of my forearm and legs. Goddamn me for wearing such thin clothing and doing something as dumbfuck idiotic as this. At least I still have… let's see, a pack of gum in the main pocket, red lint from the sweater, a wallet, and oh- my phone. I slide it open. No signal. Frustrated, I turn it onto airplane mode and slide it into my back pocket. No use for it here.

Still holding the monocles, I come to the end of the tunnel. It is almost complete dark, the light a tiny pinprick behind me.

In front of me lies a heavy tome. I bend down to pick it up, brushing off stray spiders and dirt. _The Complete Guide for New Adventurers, _it says in ancient text, some kind of fancy calligraphy bullshit that they used to use in the Victorian Era for newsprint. I flip it open, trying not to notice the fragile page crumbling at my touch. On the very first page is the name 'Aradia Megido' in curling, thin letters.

Below that is a black and white picture of a girl with flowing locks of midnight hair and dreamy eyes, a small smile on her face. The picture is so badly ruined that a huge water stain covers it, and the black has faded to a sickly purple. Her clothes are strange. I haven't seen anything like it before, and I major in History.

She's beautiful.

Aradia Megido.

The Girl out of Time. The Orchestrator of Death.

The Daughter of the Undertaker.

They don't find me until much later, and even then, I am still holding the book in my arms, the photo tucked safely into my wallet.

Ten days later, I find myself in another time and another world.

* * *

I blink and I'm standing in the middle of a busy street, a- for lack of better description- mechanical carriage headed straight for me.

The driver honks frantically, swearing incessantly as he swerves in slow motion. I am frozen, shocked.

"Get out of the way!"

Someone catches me sharply around my abdomen and hurls me onto the sidewalk paved with copper and a streetlight that looks nothing like one. My forearm skids along the ground where I fling it out to stop my fall. Dazed, I don't register the head on my stomach before it- she- stirs and looks up at me with furious, dark red eyes. "Are you deliberately daft?" she demands before reaching out to hit me once across the head. "Did you want to drum up a little business for my father's shop, dying like that smack-dab in the middle of the street? Christo, and I thought I was the suicidal one." She sits up, adopting a neutral expression, though displeasure radiates through the straight line of her back. "We would've had to pay for your funeral expenses too." She pauses once, looking over me. "And what on Alternia are you wearing?"

This is so bizarre. I was standing in the middle of my room reading Aradia Megido's book. I'd read a passage aloud to see how it rolled off my tongue, played the music sheet that was also taped to the fragile pages on my turntables. The pages were filled with her notes, some kind of elegant, loopy scrawl that conveyed _serious _and _emotionless, _though she frequently utilized sarcasm. On the page where I played the song and sent myself to some other strange world, she only wrote this: _If you don't have enough time, come and visit me._

Magic?

"You are an idiot," she declares with some degree of disdain, and with another jolt, I realize that I know her.

The same flowing locks of hair, though they are trapped in a ponytail. Red lipstick, painted on her full lips. Dark eyes, serious and blazing, though in person, they are far more exquisite than the photo does them justice.

And her clothes. A suit and somehow not-a-suit fits her shapely body, ending in a black, tattered, flowing black dress that's decorated with small gears and clockwork decals. A dress-suit? She looks like she belongs in some kind of strange world where people have already discovered space flight but not progressed past Victorian-style dress.

"You're Aradia Megido," I say with no amount of small shock, and she looks down at me like I'm insane. "You own _The Complete Guide for New Adventurers._"

She gapes at me a little at that. "How did you know that? I haven't shown that book to anyone, not even Da or Sol. Who the hell are you?"

I've landed myself into a different world. This is impossible.

So I answer to the best of my abilities. "Dave. Dave Strider."

* * *

Over the course of the following week, Aradia allows me to stay in her father's shop.

It turns out that they deal with corpses. He is the Undertaker, and she is his assistant. She doesn't seem to mind the chemicals, nor touching the dead bodies, and she wields a scalpel with the utmost of precision when it comes to embalming.

She gives no explanation for my arrival, though she is similarly fascinated as I am with my appearance in this world.

"No," she said one evening to me over a quick meal of bread baked with olive oil and rosemary, warm out of the oven with honey-vanilla spread tucked into the middle. "I don't think you're in a different world. Okay, maybe a different one as opposed to yours in sight, but I'm pretty sure that you are in a different time." She takes an elegant, small bite and gestures. "Think about it. You have this space-" and she makes a spherical motion with her hands- "—and inside you have your world." She makes a smaller sphere and another besides that one, connecting them with a swipe of her hand to denote a line. "This one is mine. It's my world. But space and time go hand-in-hand with another, so—"

I finish her thought for her. "I haven't gone anywhere outside of the main sphere. I've just gone forwards or backwards in time to here."

She almost smiles at me and leans back in her chair. "There you go. Not as daft as I first thought you were, shades-boy."

"This makes me a time traveler. How ironic."

"Ironic? What makes it ironic?" She sweeps her mug of foamy amber liquid to her lips, her eyes locked on mine.

"I never have enough time," I reply, and she's about to ask for me to clarify when her father comes downstairs in his white apron and tells her they have a new client.

"Stay and be good," she says sarcastically as she crosses over to the washbasin to clean her face and hands with strong soap. "And don't go anywhere; I haven't nearly finished with you yet."

"I'm honored that you think me so interesting," I say back before she flicks soap suds at me and goes up the stairs, putting her hair up into a ponytail.

It's a shame. Her hair looks so much better when it's down.


End file.
